A bit more about the latter. Beyond organophosphates, the main other alternative is pyrethroids. These are highly toxic to aquatic life, and they're contact poisons to pollinators just landing on the surface (some anti-insect clothing is soaked in pyrethrin for its effect). Also, neonicotinoids are often applied as seed coatings (which are taken up and spread through the plant), which primarily just affect the plant itself. Alternatives are commonly foliar sprays. This means drift to non-target impacts as well, such as in your shelterbelts, private gardens, neighbors' homes, etc. You also have to use far higher total pesticide quantities with foliar sprays instead of systematics, which not only drift, but also wash off, etc. Neonicotinoids can impact floral visitors, with adverse sublethal impacts but e.g. large pyrethroid sprayings can cause massive immediate fatal knockdown events of whole populations of pollinators.

Regrettable substitution is a real thing. We need to factor it in better. And that applies to nanoplastics as well.

So, when we say microplastics, we really mainly mean nanoplastics - the stuff made from, say, drinking hot liquids from low-melting-point plastic containers. And yeah, they very much look like a problem. The strongest evidence is for cardiovascular disease. The 2024 NEJM study for example found that for patients with above-threshold levels of nanoplastics in cartoid artery plaque were 4,5x more likely to suffer from a heart attack. Neurologically, they cross the brain-blood barrier (and quite quickly). A 2023 study found that they cause alpha-synuclein to misfold and clump together, a halmark of Parkinsons and various kinds of dementia. broadly, they're associated with oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, protein aggregation, and neurotransmitter alterations. Oxidative stress is due to cells struggling to break down nanoplastics in them. They're also associated with immunotoxicity, inflammatory bowel disease, and reproductive dysfunction, including elevating inflammatory markers, impairing sperm quality, and modulating the tumor microenvironment. With respect to reproduction, they're also associated with epigenetic dysregulation, which can lead to heritable changes.

And here's one of the things that get me - and let me briefly switch to a different topic before looping back. All over, there's a rush to ban polycarbonate due to concerns over a degradation product (bisphenol-A), because it's (very weakly) estrogenic. But typical effective estrogenic activity from typical levels of bisphenol-A are orders of magnitude lower than that of phytoestrogens in food and supplements; bisphenol-A is just too rare to exert much impact. Phytoestrogens have way better PR than bisphenol-A, and people spend money buying products specifically to consume more of them. Some arguments against bisphenol-A focus on what type of estrogenic activity it can promote (more proliferative activity), but that falls apart given that different phytoestrogens span the whole gamut of types of activation. Earlier research arguing for an association with estrogen-linked cancer seems to have fallen apart in more recent studies. It does seem associated with PCOS, but it's hard to describe it as a causal association, because PCOS is associated with all sorts of things, including diet (which could change the exposure rate vs. non-PCOS populations) and significant hormonal changes (which could change the clearance rate of bisphenol-A vs. non-PCOS populations). In short, bisphenol-A from polycarbonate is not without concern, but the concern level seems like it should be much lower than with nanoplastics.

Why bring this up? Because polycarbonate is a low-nanoplastic-emitting material. It is a quite resilient, heat tolerant plastic, and thus - being much further from its glass transition temperature - is not particularly prone to shedding nanoplastics. By contrast, its replacements - polyethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthate, etc - are highly associated with nanoplastic release, particularly with hot liquids. So by banning polycarbonate, we increase our exposure to nanoplastics, which are much better associated with actual harms. And unlike bisphenol-A, which is rapidly eliminated from the body, nanoplastics persist. You can't get rid of them. If some big harm is discovered with bisphenol-A that suddenly makes the risk picture seem much bigger than with nanoplastics, we can then just stop using it, and any further harm is gone. But we can't do that with nanoplastics.

People seriously need to think more about substitution risks when banning products. The EU in particular is bad about not considering it. Like, banning neonicotinoids and causing their replacement by organophosphates, etc isn't exactly some giant win. Whether it's a benefit to pollinators at all is very much up in the air, while it's almost certain that the substitution is more harmful for mammals such as ourselves (neonicotinoids have very low mammalian toxicity, unlike e.g. organophosphates, which are closely related to nerve agents).

Why not contract out program development to some of those Iranian hackers who seem to have drones flying at will over US military bases? It might not be a perfect solution, but it would probably be cheaper and better than the clusterf^ck they've had going on for the best part of a decade.

This is so true, so true.

And it's not even US specific. In the wake of the Ukraine war, German parliament voted to give itself 100 billion of additional taxpayer money (i.e. debt) to spend on defense. Recently a report came out of all the money spent so far, 90% did not go towards the intended purpose.

Why any of the jokers in charge of our governments are still not in jail baffles me more and more every year. Oh yes, it's because they make the rules, sorry, my bad.

That's what campaign donations get you, if they are large enough.

This is why congress occasionally bullies the big tech companies. We all think they might want to have some regulation or to punish them. Oh sweetie... they're saying "nice company you have there... would be a shame if something happened to it..."

The best time to leave github was when the evil empire bought it. The second best time is now.

Seriously. Anyone who thought MS wouldn't fuck it up in the same way they fuck up everything they touch can't be helped. It's Microsoft for crying out loud.

It could be that. What it definitely was, though, is that Sony thought they could make more money selling to data centers than to the public.

https://www.ibm.com/history/th...
"An ad hoc lecture [from 1915] from IBMâ(TM)s future CEO spawned a slogan to guide the company through a century and beyond"

https://humancenteredlearning....
"And we must study through reading, listening, discussing, observing and thinking. We must not neglect any one of those ways of study. The trouble with most of us is that we fall down on the latter -- thinking -- because it's hard work for people to think. And, as Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler said recently, 'all of the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.' (Thomas Watson, IBM)"

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/...
"All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work. (Nicholas Murray Butler, often misattributed to Thomas J. Watson)"

So, yeah, echoing your point, make programmers do the hardest parts of their job all the time -- especially reviewing code from inconsistent-to-put-it-politely AI contributors -- and no wonder they feel "fried".

Does AI support for programming need to be this way? I might hope not, but we are also mainly hearing about AI used within a short-term-profit-maximizing hyper-competitive corporate social context. Like I say in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

New car dealerships aren't remotely small business owners! Those are huge, and very profitable chains. One such chain is largely owned by Berkshire-Hathaway. Maybe your used car lots are small business owners, I doubt they were consulted on this particular issue.

Clive Sinclair's company collapsed within five years of shipping their first computer. Perhaps not a good counter-example.

Jobs gets all the accolades and fame but he was just a pushy sociopath in a suit, plenty of others could have done what he did. VERY few could have done what Wozniak did and its a damn shame that not many people outside of the tech world have heard of him.

That is false. Jobs and Wozniak actually are the yin and yang of Apple. Wozniak by himself, left to his own devices, would still be working at HP. Jobs by himself, would have been a has-been engineer. Jobs was actually competent as an engineer (unlike say, other "engineers" like Musk).

Jobs though, was more tuned into the business side of things than the engineering side of things, while Woz was the opposite.

Woz and Jobs got started by making a blue box - Jobs had read about them in the Esquire article, and Woz built one of the first digital blue boxes. Both of them went around Berkeley selling them to college students for $150 or so and they made a few thousand.

Jobs knew about computers, Woz built a computer. Woz was basically giving the Apple I away at the Homebrew Computer Club and it was one among dozens of others doing the same. Jobs had the business acumen to recognize he could do one better and sold it to a computer store and get the production of it going (requiring Woz to sell his HP-35 calculator). They'd build 10 (all they could afford), sell them and use the money to build 20 and so on.

Wpz designed the hardware. Jobs saw the potential and could leverage the confidence he had to not just sell it, but to get it produced - arranging the suppliers to give them 30 days credit.

These days it's a lot easier since if you want something built, China can handle the production if you meet the minimum order quantity. But back then, it's not like there was a huge electronics supply chain, production lines, or anything else.

Both Jobs and Woz were soldering Apple Is in that garage too - like I said, Jobs was an OK engineer, but he knew talent. Woz was an excellent engineer, but was happy at HP and didn't really have the desire to start his own company.

It's Yin and Yang - you need both, which is how Apple got started. Woz would likely have kept this computer as a nifty prototype then bought a Commodore when they came out a few years later whilst still at HP. Jobs would likely have drifted among various electronics companies (he was at Atari) once the crash happened.

You have to remember Jobs went and found NeXT after Macintosh got the Apple board to oust him. He sold his Apple stock and basically created NeXT. He used the earnings at NeXT to basically backstop Pixar (who was struggling and about to go under) and eventually fund Toy Story.

And he brought the second coming to Apple, recognizing talent in Jony Ives to design a computer so unique everyone knew what it was.

Doesn't excuse Jobs being an asshole, though. The only redeeming personal quality Jobs had is that he managed his RDF (reality distortion field) to push the people who work for him to do their best work. He was a pain to work for, but if you actually do good, he did reward you to encourage you to do more great work.

I didn't know about that before.

That's always a big factor in early experimenting. Who pays for all the components and test equipment? Even when the labour is free, if you don't have the R&D resources you're forever dead in the water.

It's odd because it's a pretty well known story. Wozniak loved experimenting and HP had a policy that lets engineers have access to HP's parts to produce a product. The only restriction was that HP had the right to your invention if they wanted it.

Wozniak presented HP management with the then Apple I computer, but they rejected it because they couldn't believe anything using a standard TV would meet HP's quality. The reason being that TVs from random manufacturers will have different visual quality and there was no way to control it.

But I keep all my vaping equipment - mod, drippers and all manners of accessories - from the early teens when vaping was free, unregulated and not yet killed by Big Pharma. Hell, I still have 3 gallons of 100mg nic base in blue bottles with nitrogen in storage in the freezer from that time.

I was a big vaping enthusiast for years. It's what kept me from smoking again. I've quit smoking and vaping for years, but just in case I decide to pick up vaping again - like if I'm diagnosed with cancer again, and it's terminal this time - I keep all that good stuff from a better past.

I found the book underwhelming. The Martian was a great book, and I read it long before I heard of the movie. Project Hail Mary I found was much more formulaic book and much less compelling a read than The Martian. I haven't read Artemis - in fact, I didn't know of it until recently.

It was my friend who introduced me to Project Hail Mary and said it wasn't as good. After getting my own copy at a local indie bookstore and reading it, I have to agree. It's a nice book, but honestly it lacked a lot of the surprise and wonder of The Martian.

Still, doesn't mean I don't want to see the movie, but i probably would get it on disc since I can't really justify seeing it in IMAX. Unless it was in 3D I suppose. 3D at home is basically dead which makes it impossible to see anything in 3D outside of theatres.

>arguing it unfairly advantages startups

Way to say your dealers suck.